À propos de la conférence
This talk argues that Delighting the World (mi dbang rtogs brjod ‘jig ten kun tu dga’ ba’i gtam), the biography of the Tibetan lay king Polhané Sönam Tobgye (r.1727-1747) presented a novel model of ethical governance during a critical juncture in Inner Asian geopolitics. During Polhane’s life time, Central Tibet would experience violent transitions between Khoshot, Zungar and finally Qing rule which would last (in name) until the 20th century. Written on commission by his minister, the Sanskrit polymath Dokhar Tsering Wangyal (1697-1763), the work is widely considered both a literary masterpiece and a valuable source of 18th century Tibetan and Inner Asian history. Drawing on Tibetan genealogical accounts, Indian literary theory and multilingual archival sources, Polhané’s biography is widely considered the first of its kind in the Tibetan life writing tradition. Resisting the urge to classify the work as a ‘modern’ biography, I understand the text as a distinct form of historiographical practice that responded directly to pressing questions posed by the expansion of Qing rule over Central Tibet in 1720. Grounded in kāvya theory and the genre of nītiśāstra or Sanskrit treatises on politics and statecraft that were popular in Tibet, Tsering Wangyal portrays Polhané as a cakravartin, or an idealized Buddhist ruler. Tibetan Buddhist kingship guides are typically concerned with a ruler’s vertical relationship to the heavens, eliding discussion of horizontal relationships to neighbouring rulers and political formations. However, Polhané’s kingship - sensitive to the overlapping sovereignties of 18th century Inner Asia - is articulated as a model of ‘situated kingship’, one that accommodates for Qing imperial rule within a Buddhist cosmological framework. Framing Polhané’s biography as an important work of early modern Buddhist political theory, we can disrupt previous nationalist readings of Tibetan Buddhist elites in the Qing-Ganden Podrang encounter as either collaborators or rebels, and instead gain valuable insight into the vitality of Tibetan Buddhist knowledge making practices under shifting political terrain.
À propos du conférencier
Riga Shakya is a doctoral candidate in Sino-Tibetan history at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALAC) at Columbia University. He is broadly interested in the connected histories of state and empire building across China, Tibet and the Himalayas, and the convergence between early modern knowledge systems and colonial modernity. His dissertation Mirrors of History: The Poetics of Kingship in the Time of Empire (1720-1757) examines issues of sacred kingship, elite literary culture and historiographical practice through a study of the role of Tibetan aristocratic elites and their vision of the Qing imperial project in Tibet and greater Inner Asia during the 18th century. He is founding editor of Waxing Moon: Journal for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies supported by the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, Columbia Libraries.
